ANNALS OF DeSANTISTAN: DeSantis signs bill to defund DEI programs at Florida’s public colleges (WaPo)

"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein,' as our prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Houghwot Jackson, wrote for the Supreme Court in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).  

Ignorant but Ivy League degreed Flori-DUH Governor RONALD DION DeSANTIS, rebarbative reprorobate, is a disgrace to the human race.  We reject his works and pomps.

Coarse, uncouth, control freak ideologues are mucking up education, showing the way for other white supremacist, racist, sexist homophobes to attack education.

From The Washington Post:

DeSantis signs bill to defund DEI programs at Florida’s public colleges

By Jack Stripling

May 15, 2023 at 12:03 p.m. EDT

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks on a book tour in Des Moines on March 10, 2023. (Rachel Mummey for The Washington Post)

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill into law Monday barring the state’s colleges and universities from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and limiting how race can be discussed in many courses.

The move comes amid a larger conservative attack on higher education DEI programs, which DeSantis and others say reinforce racial divisions and promote liberal orthodoxy. Supporters of the programs say they are critical to serving the nation’s increasingly diverse student populations.

“If you look at the way this has actually been implemented across the country, DEI is better viewed as standing for discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination,” DeSantis said at a news conference at New College of Florida in Sarasota. “And that has no place in our public institutions. This bill says the whole experiment with DEI is coming to an end in the state of Florida.”

Florida’s new law prohibits public colleges from spending state or federal money on DEI efforts. These programs often assist colleges in increasing student and faculty diversity, which can apply to race and ethnicity, as well as sexual orientation, religion and socioeconomic status.

DeSantis’s plan to starve college diversity efforts advances in Florida

The law also forbids public colleges from offering general education courses — those that are part of a required curriculum for all college students — that “distort significant historical events,” teach “identity politics,” or are “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, or economic inequities.”

The Florida legislation has been met with backlash at both the state and national level, where higher education experts and First Amendment advocates say the state is trampling on academic freedom. “It’s basically state-mandated censorship, which has no place in a democracy,” Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, said in a recent interview with The Washington Post.

DeSantis said students who want to study “niche subjects,” such as critical race theory, ought to look elsewhere. “Florida’s getting out of that game,” he said. “If you want to do things like gender ideology, go to Berkeley. Go to some of these other places.”

Ousted Florida college diversity leader: ‘I am the first casualty’

The governor held the signing on the campus of New College of Florida, a public liberal arts college in Sarasota, where the governor recently appointed a crop of conservative trustees. Eliminating New College’s DEI office was among the newly constituted board’s first orders of business.

The event drew protests, whose chants could be heard inside the bill-signing ceremony.

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